Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 8

Don’t Come Home Until…

I am enjoying the hell out of this t-shirt I just bought (I got it in gray). If you’ve been following the story of a certain hypocritical right-wing power couple in Florida, you might enjoy it, too. You can buy it here and proceeds benefit the Florida Freedom to Read Project.

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Jazz Wants to Kill G. William?

In the earliest days of working on I Hunt Killers, Jazz was originally going to have much more disturbing thoughts. In the final published book, he wrestles with his impulses, but when I was first spitballing and brainstorming, his brain was filled with lurid, grotesque fantasies CONSTANTLY.

That sort of thing works…a little. You can’t keep it up over the course of an entire novel, though — it becomes overwhelming. So I dialed it way back so that I still had room to build.

Anyway, this little blip below is from the very early days, when I was noodling around with exactly how messed up it was to live inside the head of one Jasper Francis Dent…

G. William was a good old boy, but not the stupid redneck type. He wanted people to think he was. It was convenient. But that slow Southern drawl belied the quick and lively intelligence in his eyes. Most people missed it. Not Jazz.

Jazz didn’t miss much of anything.

You couldn’t be a small-time hick cop and do what G. William had done: Catch the most notorious serial killer of the 21st century.

Jazz felt it rise up in him like a fever — the sudden, overwhelming lust, a lust that was so strangely nonsexual. He put a hand out to steady himself against the table.

Stop it! he commanded himself. Fight it!

“You all right, son?” G. William asked.

Son… It was the wrong thing — the perfectly wrong thing — to say when Jazz was in this kind of state. It made him think of his father, of his father and the other bodies that had turned up years ago, the bodies of his childhood.

“Low blood sugar,” Jazz lied smoothly. “I haven’t eaten today. Little dizzy.”

“Hell, whyn’t you say so?” G. William patted his pockets, jiggling his fat under the taut polyester of his sheriff’s uniform—

JAZZ THINKS OF GUTTING HIM, CUTTING OPEN THAT BLUBBER

—before diving into his left breast pocket and coming up with two hard candies, the cellophane wrappers crinkling. “Butterscotch? Little sugar boost.”

“Sure.” Jazz gave him the Thanks Smile.

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Serial Killer of the Month: Harold Shipman

And I thought Billy Dent had a high kill-count…

Meet Harold Shipman, British doctor and serial killer with about twice the kills of Billy’s 123! Overachiever much, Harold?

Shipman was a medical doctor and thus a rare example of a male “Angel of Mercy.” Angel of Mercy serial killers are typically women in the medical field (usually nurses) who kill their patients with medication to make it look like natural causes. Male serial killers tend to be more stereotypically violent.

But Shipman killed his victims via lethal injections. And he wasn’t always smart about it because he killed a bunch of people who were in fairly good health, where you couldn’t just write it off as the old or infirm passing away from natural causes.

Shipman was eventually discovered (when he apparently doctored a victim’s will to inherit — dumb move!) and sentenced to life in prison. He decided to save the taxpayers of England some coin and — as the kids say — unalived himself in 2004.

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(Image credit)

Direct Creativity: A Chronicle of Inspiration!

I really, really enjoyed this book…

Paul Kupperberg is a comic book writer responsible for a lot of stuff I loved as a kid. He wrote Superboy, Supergirl, and Superman (the Kryptonian trifecta!) as well as the seminal Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes mini-series, the World of Krypton mini-series, and so on. (Don’t let me blather on — just check out his bibliography.)Anyway, Paul has taken it upon himself to chronicle the Bronze Age of Comics via a series of interview books with the creators of the time. His latest is Direct Creativity: The Creators Who Inspired the Creators, a volume in which he interviews influential comic book creators about what influenced them in the first place.

Paul’s a relaxed, garrulous interviewer and has no difficulty getting luminaries such as Mark Millar, Mark Waid, Gerry Conway, Tom King, and more to open up and discuss their work and careers with frank honesty. If you’re at all interested in comics or the creative urge/endeavor, check it out. You can buy a copy here.

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Creating Kid Lit — I’m Teaching!

So, this summer, through the auspices of the fine folks at The Writers Circle, I will be teaching a six-week course (via Zoom) on “Creating Kid Lit.” Here’s how The Writers Circle describes it:

Dragons! Pirates! Cowgirls! Mastodon-sized dung beetles! Children’s fiction never fails to let a writer’s imagination go wild. In this hands-on workshop, writers with an interest in picture books, middle grade, or YA fiction will learn how to craft compelling stories and characters that will make young readers want to keep turning pages. Works in progress will be constructively critiqued in a supportive environment. And real-world advice on the publishing industry will help your completed manuscript stand out in a crowd.

And, yeah, that’s about the size of it. (Though there is also plenty of room for realistic, contemporary fiction even though it isn’t specifically mentioned!) We’ll meet Thursdays from 7pm-9pm (Eastern time) and it should be a ton of fun.

You’ll find registration information for this class (and others, too) at this link. Join me!

What if Serial Killers had Assistants?

OK, so this video cracked me up…

@squilliam_peters

Anyone know a good locksmith? #comedy #sketch #serialkiller #sketchcomedy

♬ original sound – Will Peters

The Long Haul

Over on the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, I wrote about “The Long Haul:”

A publishing friend of mine who is much smarter than I about such things once said to me, “The only true marker of success in this business is longevity.”

After 17 years and 27 books, I suppose by that metric I would have no choice but to consider myself a success. It’s funny, though — it doesn’t feel like success.

This could lead us down a deep, dark rabbit hole of what is success and what does success feel like, but instead I think I want to talk about the other side of the equation: Longevity.

To read the whole thing, go visit IWSG!

Jasper Dent: Sociopath?

What you’re about to read comes from the original proposal for I Hunt Killers. I wrote up a bunch of scenes in order to persuade my editor that I wasn’t nuts and that she should buy this book. (Spoiler alert: She bought three of them, plus two novellas!)

As you’ll see below, I had a vague idea of Jazz keeping a journal, in which he tries to discern whether or not he’s a true sociopath. My editor wasn’t in love with the idea and since it was just a notion I had in the very early stages, I tossed it when her reaction was “Meh.”

Anyway, this has never been seen…until now!

[Chapter 3 will pick up with Jazz seeing the body and then move on from there. After that, I’m toying with the idea of a sort of journal Jazz keeps, titled “Am I a Sociopath?” In it, Jazz lists the various diagnostic criteria for determining if someone is a serial killer and applies them to his own life — trying to determine if he’s a sociopath or not. (DSM-IV dictates that you can’t officially diagnose a sociopath until age 18, so Jazz is trying to get a jump on it.) This next bit is one of those “journal entries.”

If we end up NOT doing the journal entries, then Jazz’s manipulation of G. William in the previous chapter will be made more explicit in the chapter itself. Otherwise, I like the idea of presenting one thing to the reader and then pulling a reveal later.]

 

AM I A SOCIOPATH?

Today’s Characteristic: Manipulation

Sociopaths don’t care about other people. As a result, they have no compunctions whatsoever about manipulating others into doing things for them, even if it’s dramatically against the self-interest of the person in question.

Example: Billy’s fifth kill. This particular kill was not planned in the usual painstaking detail he would later become known for (and proud of). This was something more akin to a crime of opportunity. Billy encountered Linda Rae Stewart on a train from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. He was establishing an alibi for his fourth kill at the time.

Since Billy was very charming (SEE: CHARM), it was no problem to strike up a conversation with Linda Rae. By the time Linda Rae’s stop came up, Billy had already decided she would be Number Five on his personal hit parade. He faked an emergency cell phone call and made up a story about a death in the family, a sudden need to get to Chicago. Even though Linda Rae wanted nothing more than to get off the train and get in her car and drive home to her husband, she soon found herself offering to drive Billy from the train station to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Chicago. This was the last decision Linda Rae Stewart would ever make. Her lipstick (a shade called Heroine!) ended up in the rumpus room.

Application: Today, I manipulated G. William into giving me exactly what I wanted, even though under normal circumstances he would never have done so. I wanted to see the body in the Finger case. I needed to. I had seen many of Billy’s victims growing up, but that was when I was still under his control. My mind was still clouded.

I needed to be up close to the Finger’s handiwork, to see what my reaction would be after two years out from under Billy’s thumb. And I knew that there was no way in the world G. William would ever let me do that.

So I manipulated him. I pretended to accidentally let slip that I was studying the Finger, knowing that it would activate G. William’s concern for my mental well-being. From there, it was easy to appeal to his two great desires: His desire to help me and his desire to catch a killer. By tantalizing him with insights into the Finger and then pretending to slip up and tell him my concerns about myself, I manipulated him into offering me the case file. He actually thought it was his idea, even though I practically planted it in his head. After that, getting access to the body was so easy that I hardly even had to ask.

So, the question is: Am I a sociopath?

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Shazam! Rides the Rails

OK, this may be silly, but…

I am absolutely obsessed with the mere existence of this Shazam! HO scale model train. My son loves trains more than he loves his momma and Twix bars, and this one would look great on his track.

Am I going to buy it and try to convince my wife it’s for a kid who doesn’t know anything at all about Billy Batson and the Marvel Family? I mean… Probably…?

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Dolly Parton: Rockstar!

I am really digging Dolly Parton’s latest album, Rockstar. When the inestimable Ms. Parton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she initially balked at the honor, saying she was a country artist and hadn’t done anything worthwhile in the field of rock and roll. Well, they inducted her anyway and I guess she felt like she needed to live up to it because she’s released an album of rock covers that will sear your ears off. Great stuff, with guest stars like Sting, Joan Jett, Paul McCartney, Pat Benatar, and more.

Here’s a link to it on Apple Music.

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